Silly Little Country

It's Way More Complicated

Andrew Coyne has some views on the current Conservative government. I agree with much of the column.

The result is a uniquely nasty, know-nothing strain of conservatism. The Thatcher Tories, unlike their forebears, weren’t anti-intellectual: her cabinet contained some of Britain’s most fertile social and political minds. Ronald Reagan, though hardly an intellectual, did not demonize expert opinion, or pit the educated classes against the rest. Even today’s Republican party, as know-nothing as it sometimes appears, relies heavily on a network of think tanks to provide it with intellectual heft. Only in Canada have expertise and ideas been so brutally cast aside. On the level of principle, this is appalling. A society that holds education and expertise in contempt, no less than one that disdains commerce or entrepreneurship, is dying. To whip up popular hostility to intellectuals is to invite the public to jump on its own funeral pyre.

But this is really over the top. Vic Toews, hardly one of the softer Conservatives, is defending what seems to me an amazingly temperate response to a human smuggling operation that has now landed in Canada.
So I don't know.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 9:21 AM